Whatsoever! Sport, drills, performance analysis and more

Monday, February 24, 2014

My last work for Performance Analysis this year was to speak about the figure of the performance analyst. We were allowed to use any format: powerpoint, audio, video, essay... everything goes.

This is what I did.

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Who is the Performance Analyst (PA)?

From the lessons that I have been attending so far I
can tell that you there is not a final answer to this question. There
are grey areas where the PA operates and he\she shares these areas
with other sport professional, for instance with coaches and
psychologists.

Nevertheless, I have been trying to reply to the
answer.

Here there is a monologue, written by myself, of a PA
that questions himself about his nature. Even if it is a monologue,
there are two characters in this dialogue: the PA himself and the
PA's mind that guide him to the answer according to the Socratic
method “maieutics” (Plato, c. 385–380 BC).

Who are you?

'We are beyond the curtain.

We are away from center stage.

We stay in the darkness.

We are shadows'

Who are you?

'We know what we could be.

We do not know what we are.

We are everything and we are nothing.

We are not born to become.

We are born to be.

Let Him decide who will we be.

We are Proteus'

Who is “Him”?

'He is the Master'

Are you his slave?

'No, I am free'

Do you depend on him?

'Yes'

Are you free?

'No.

I depend on Him'

Does he depend on you?

'Only if He wants so'

Who are you?

'I am who He wants me to be.

Be his wisdom

and I shall be Athena;

be his strength

and I shall be Ares;

be his support

and I shall be Atlas'

Who are you?

'I am who He wants me to be'

Are you alone?

'No, I am not'

Who is with you?

'My Brothers'

Who are your Brothers?

'They are who They want them to be'

Who are your Brothers?

'They are everything and they are nothing;

they are Proteus'

Who are your Brothers?

'We are Performance Analyst'

To give a name is power upon the named one;

the Book teaches us (The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:28)

To name is to sort things according to their nature;

the Book teaches us (The Holy Bible, Genesis
2:20-21)

Who are you?

'I am everything and I am nothing'

Who are you?

'I am a Performance Analyst;

I am who Him wants me to be'

Is that the truth?

'There is no truth;

there is no lie.

Everything is relative'

We can give hundred interpretations of a glare in a
mirror;

yet, the image that generates that glare is only one.

Look in your mirror.

What do you see?

'A Performance Analyst'

Who are you?

'I am who him wants me to be'

Is that the truth?

'No'

Who are you?

'I am a Performance Analyst;

I am everything He can possibly need'

Who is He?

'He is the Master'

Is that the truth?

'No'

Who is He?

'He is a Man'

Who are you?

'I am a Man'

Who are you?

'We are One'

There is no general without an army;

yet, an army without a general is not.

Who is One?

'I am a Performance Analyst;

he is a Coach.

He needs me;

yet, without him I am not.

We are One'

Who is One?

'Our nature is different;

yet, we walk the same path'

Who is One?

'I am One,

I am a Performance Analyst;

he is One,

he is a Coach.

Our nature may be different;

yet, we share the same destiny.

I shall think with his mind

and

he shall see with my eyes.

Two men;

one path.

We are together

and

we are One!'

Now that I have figured out who (I believe) is the
PA, I need to discovery what does he\she do.

I have been trying to think about the absolute
performance analyst (it is not a new kind of vodka). The word
“absolute” comes from the Latin absolutus, which
means: not relative to something else (Chambers, 2000). In a
nutshell, I am trying to figure out the PA's activity not linked to
any sport, but I want to discovery its nature and essence, or its
archetype, if we want to use the platonic philosophical idea (Plato,
c. 370 BC).

Tackling the problem from
an abstract point of view allowed me to get rid of the tasks of a
single sport, such as opposition analysis in football, which is not
present or is minimal in other sports, such as in triple jump or in
archery.

After reading articles
online, from blogs and the SOOC, I came out with this definition: the
performance analyst improves and predicts performances based on the
information he/she possesses.

There are three key
points: improvement, prediction and information.

I do realize that the most
important key point is the last one.

Without information there
is no PA and an analysis cannot exist without data. Basically, no
info no cry, as Bob Marley used to sing.

Data collection is crucial
for the the analyst. If he\she collects no data, he\she would have no
job; and if he\she collects the wrong data, he\she will end up with
no job.

There are a lot
information that can be collected and many ways to collect them, but
is not my intention to illustrate them. For me, the bread and butter
of performance analysis is the collection of data.

The will to know the
future is part of the nature of the human being. Heroes in ancient
Greek used to visit the Delphi Oracle before a battle and Roman
Emperor used to divine, which is to foretell or to predict, before
going to war. The verb “to divine” comes from the Latin
divinare:to be
inspired by a god (Chambers, 2000).

More generally, to know
what the future holds is one of the question of life. Now, I do not
want to write about life and death; what I am trying to say is that
PAs are not doing anything new. They may use new techniques and
technologies, but, in the end, they are doing the same that our
ancestors used to do five-thousand years ago.

Yet, I would like to go a
little further.

In the Art of War of Sun
Tzu (6th BC, pp. 96)it is said:

“Prior information

Enables wise rulers

And worthy generals

To move

And conquer,

Brings them success

Beyond that of the
multitude”

Basically, to know your
enemy before the battle is necessary to win. We can apply the same
concept to a PA that does pre-match analysis of the opponent.

However, Sun Tzu (6th
BC, pp. 96) states:

“This information

Cannot be obtained

From spirits;

It cannot be deduced

By analogy;

It cannot be calculated

By measurement.”

After the book continues
saying that the only way to get “this information” is through
spies.

Anyway, it is stated that
is impossible to predict the opponent's moves by analogy or by
measurement. In other words, the PA's job could be right on paper but
on the day of the match it may be a disaster.

Personally, I do agree
with this statement.

If we take any “prediction
job”, we can see that they are not 100% accurate (and this is why
they predict). Weather forecast is one of them.

Meteorologists try to
predict the weather condition of tomorrow, but they will never
say:”Tomorrow is going to rain”; instead, they are more likely to
say:”70% of chance of raining for tomorrow”; and we are going to
translate it as:”Tomorrow is better that I take the umbrella with
me because it may rain”.

Another example is the
broker. They try to predict the market's next move and invest their
money based on their data; still, that prediction may be right or
wrong.

When performance analysis
is working on the opposition, we are talking of inexact science.

Now, I am not giving a
qualitative judgment.

I do believe that the
accuracy of the prediction relies in the analysis' skills. There is a
lot people that made a fortune in the stock market, such as George
Soros (The Forbes 2013, online), and this is the point when you bring
the inexact science of trading to a state of art.

A PA should aim to this,
to elevate his\her science to art.

As there is no much room
for a theoretical\philosophical debate about the last key point,
improvement, which is quite self explanatory in my opinion, I would
like to draw my conclusions.

PAs may play a crucial
role to bring a team to success. Coaches should “use” them wisely
in order to achieve valuable results as they can make a difference
between glory and failure.

[Part I] [Versione Italiana]
In the last post we spoke about the factors that generate
strength, which are mass and acceleration; the first one is the
muscle size (muscular cross-sectional area) and the second one is the
central neural system (CNS).

For the mass, I will redirect you to this post.
Now, let's focus on our neural system.

There are six aspect of the CNS that we can improve in order to
get stronger:

Fiber Recruitment

Firing Rates

Intra-muscular Coordination

Inter-muscular Coordination

Antagonist Disinhibition

Growth and Pruning

The more force is needed, the more the recruitment
increases. Our nervous system is able to prevent injuries by reducing
the number of fiber recruited when the tension on the muscles goes
behind the “warning point”, i.e. too much weight. Yet, with
training this inhibitory process can be reduced, which increases the
number of fiber recruited; remember: more fibers, more force.

When all the fibers of the muscle are recruited, fire
rating occurs. Basically, when our CNS senses that all the muscle
fibers are recruited, it sends more electrical signals to the muscle
to tell them to contract faster which further increases the strength
produced.

Coordination referees to the ability of the muscle to
synchronize its contraction between it own fibers, intra-muscolar
coordination, and between other muscles, inter-muscular coordination.

In untrained people, motor units fire random signals
to the muscles to recruit the force necessary; as they further train,
their CSA is able to synchronize the firing of the motors units.

It is like rowing; the team performs better if
everybody row at the same time instead that randomly.

Antagonist disinhibition can improve the strength
produced by the agonist muscle. This is achieved by extensively
stretching the muscle opposite the one you are going to work. For
instance, stretching the triceps if you are going to work the biceps.

This process is call reciprocal inhibition; the CSA
sends the signals to contract the biceps and at the same time it
sends a message to the triceps to relax.

The growth and the pruning of neural pathways is an
automatic process that occurs in the brain; for this reason, we will
not go in details. The more you practice a movement, the more the
neural pathway for that movement grows stronger. Think about a new
technique, over head squat for instance; at the beginning you may not
be able to perform it properly because you haven't never done it
before. But, after two, three, four weeks of over head squat you will
master it (well, you should....).

(all this session,
Low, 2011)

So, how do I train my CNS?

To develop max strength, you should work with weights
between 80% and 100% of your 1RM, 1 to 4 sets (Bompa, 1996). Bear in
mind that this kind of training is very strenuous for both your CNS
and muscles. Keep the rest between 3 and 6 minutes (for the 95% /100%
1RM); this is the time necessary to restore the ATP stores within
your muscles.

The most popular method to develop strength is doing
exercises with gradually increase the weights (Kurz, 2001). A
work-out may looks something like this:

I am going to write a couple of posts about strength,
what is it, how to develop it and how to maintain it.

First of all, let's define what is strength in
physic:

F=m·a

Strength =
mass*acceleration

As we can see, strength
is the product of two factors: mass and acceleration.

Moving from physic to
physiologic, the mass (m) corresponds to the muscular cross-sectional
area, roughly “how big the muscle is”, and the acceleration (a)
corresponds to the nervous system (Kenney, Costill & Wilmore,
2011).

All clear so far?

Let's go a little bit
deeper.

Our muscles are made of
fibers and there are three kinds of them:

Type I

Type IIa

Type IIb

Type I are our "slow
twitch" fibers, aka "red fibers" due to the elevated
number of mitochondria that are located within them. This kind of
fibers have a great endurance capacity and are the ones most
developed in endurance sports.

Type IIa are kind of
hybrid of Type I and Type IIb fibers. Their color is pinkish and they
share the characteristics of both fibers. According the kind of
training, your body is able to convert them in Type I or Type IIb.

Type IIb are our “fast
twitch” fibers, aka “white fibers” due to the lack of
mitochondria. They rely solely on the anaerobic system and they get
fatigued very quickly. Yet, they are able to contract very rapidly
and they are the main fiber developed in power and strength sports.

While I was training in
the gym, I have been listening to a lot of people say stuffs like: “I
gotta training this way 'cause my biceps are made of red fibers”
and so on. Unless you put a needle in arm and you take a bit of your
muscle to analyze it, it is impossible to know the percent of fibers
composing your muscles. On the other hand, with proper training, is
possible to “shape” the Type IIa; for instance, a 10000m runner
is more likely to have more red fibers than an Olympic weight lifter
due to the different kind of training that they follow. By the way,
the number of slow and fast fibers it predetermined from the birth.

When we are talking
about acceleration (a), we are considering the motor units and the
central nervous system.

Motor units are composed
of a the neuron and all the muscle fibers that it innervates. Each
neuron innervates only one kind of fiber although it can innervated
more than one fiber.

The central nervous
system (CNS) is composed of the brain and the spine cord. The CNS
govern the activation of the motor units.

(for all this
session: Birch, MacLaren & George, 2005)

Ok, for today is enough.

In the next post I will
cover in which ways the CNS can affect the strength output.